Kitchen fun

Getting back in the kitchen more often these days, just on a whim!

Made some "Adai" with the little one for company. 

Adai : ~18 % protein (batter made from rice and lentils)

It is good to be back!

Hatrick!

The little one had taken a first wicket already.. 

She made it two in a row at Anchorage airport just before we boarded a very special flight! 

She promptly made it three in a row ! 

Our conversation before bedtime?

Little One : Appa, should I go "Pal thech" (teeth brush) ? 

Me  : you can .. but how are you going to "eeee" ?

Little One and Jr. both giggling : You are right! She cannot do any "eeee".. so what is the point of brushing? also she keeps spitting out everything !

Me : Well, she has no upper front teeth at all.. this is really weird. Hope they grow back fast!

Needless to say, we are having some fun with the toothless wonder..

Smart enough.... but not smart enough?

A conversation earlier today that centered around some of Jr.'s classmates who have signed up for one week courses at Stanford and Berkeley for summer. Yes! You read that right.

Ten year olds attending special "educamps" in everything from Java program skills to Creative Photo editing and publishing... at a cost of ~ 1000 bucks for a Mon-Fri class which is 9AM-3PM.

My first thought was "How can I teach a class like that and retire soon?"

Anyways, we were talking about the correlation between the kids grades in school today to see if they are super smart.

Jr.: I don't know as we are not allowed to look at other kids report cards.

Me : when I was little the whole class knew what everyone got. The teachers would read out our scores before handing out our test papers!

Jr.: Well, it is different now and I did get many "O's" this year! (O is for Outstanding)

Me : (looking at little one) Did you get any O's?

LO : Appa, (yells) HOW CAN I GET O'S IF I GOT A MINUS FOR "LISTENING AND FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS" ?! YOU TELL ME.

Me : !!!!!????

Seriously, how can I tell her anything after a rhetorical question like that? You tell me!

Finally on stage

The little one, had figured out that doing any extracurricular activity like music, dance etc. is a lot of hard work and the rewards for going on stage are not proportional to the work. She could throw a tantrum for not being tall enough to get on the Harry Potter ride and get a game console. Compare that to working for a whole year and getting on some annual day program for which you get a new pencil or eraser.. it was no contest!

She pretty much said "No" without a second thought to any classes that invovled the word "practice". 

Recently though, her close friends were all roped in to do a school performance for the International festival. A fun looking Dandiya dance.. so we convinced her to go. In spite of missing many sessions with her flu, she made up for it by doing a nice job of dancing on stage. More than that, we now know the girl has moves. We did not know she could shake her hips like that or have such expressions.. 

Here is a picture taken by her teacher. We are truly blessed to live in a place where an International festival is organized where kids show culture and dancing from across the globe to their classmates. There were Kung fu demos by little kids that were simply amazing, Gangnam style dancing, Japanese dancing, Chinese dance, Persian songs, Bengali poetry.. it was refreshing to see this!

Now that she has been on stage, we told her "You are going to dance class" and before we finished the sentence the answer was "NO!".

Memories..

BIL sent me an old picture while cleaning up his stuff from 2008.. 

It was a keeper! While the background distracts you, the smile on our faces is priceless!

Spent a few minutes in CS5 to get this one.. 

Wish to bundle her up like that now! 

See what I mean by they are growing up sooo fast?!

Thanks to my BIL for saving old pictures. Have purchased a negative scanner as my Christmas gift, thanks to Costcos 24 deals of Christmas in 24 days.. Have literally 1000's of negatives from 1989 to 2002 in India and in my closet. Can scan a lot of those before the film starts to decay! That should be a fun Christmas project to try and set up.